The Advocacy Alliance is a multi-department effort at TU to end the violence on our campus. This committee involves the Dean of Student’s Office, TITAN, Alexander Health Center, TU Counseling and Psychological Services, Greek Life, TU Athletics, Campus Security, and many more.
The Advocacy Alliance is actively involved in educational awareness projects related to sexual violence and is working to develop training programs for students and faculty.
More About the Alliance
In early fall 2013, TITAN began an invaluable partnership with the Sexual Violence Prevention and Educational Programming Committee, commonly referred to as the Advocacy Alliance. The Advocacy Alliance is an interdisciplinary, interdepartmental committee, which seeks to prevent and intervene with interpersonal violence on the University of Tulsa’s campus. The Alliance is composed of individuals from a number of different programs and departments, including TITAN, Housing, Student Affairs (Orientation, Multicultural Affairs, Greek Life), Alexander Health Center, Counseling Center, Campus Security, Board of Trustees, and Athletics.
In order to facilitate the Alliance’s goal of promoting healthy relations through communication and education, and working toward the elimination of violence on this campus—members have worked hard to initiate a variety of active and passive methods of prevention programming. Members of TITAN, with the help of other Alliance members, created and facilitated prevention programming for undergraduate Orientation Leaders (OLs) and Resident Assistants (RAs). This programming focused on educating OLs and RAs about sexual violence and bystander intervention and sought to equip them with information that they could then pass on to the undergraduates with whom they work.
In conjunction with these programming efforts, TITAN members also created and distributed Violence Intervention Booklets (VIBe), which provide information about various forms of interpersonal violence and useful on-campus and community resources for individuals who may experience, or know someone who has experienced interpersonal violence. These booklets continue to be distributed around campus at present. The first part of the “Red Flag Campaign” was also launched campus-wide. The Red Flag Campaign is a public awareness campaign designed to address dating violence and to promote the prevention of dating violence on college campuses. It encourages students to speak up and act when they see warning signs (or red flags) for dating violence in relationships of those around them. One major series of events took place during National Sexual Assault Awareness week (April 7th through April 11th), in which the Alliance hosted “Turn Off the Violence” week, featuring a bystander student presentation and a sexual violence panel.
Recently, the Advocacy Alliance launched its “iStand campaign.” This campaign features a multitude of university personnel, including President Upham, describing the reasons they stand against sexual violence. Through this endeavor, the Alliance hopes to help continue to foster a culture on this campus where violence is not accepted. The Alliance also maintains a strong media web presence. The Alliance’s Facebook page is updated weekly with information for students related to topics including but not limited to rape myths, various forms of interpersonal violence, unique populations affected by violence, and campus, local and national resources for those impacted by violence. Finally, the Alliance has completed several waves of posters that display useful information related to various forms of violence, and resources on campus that are available to students. For example, sexual violence table tents have been displayed throughout the first and second floors of ACAC.
TITAN and the larger Advocacy Alliance will continue to seek out innovative, effective ways to bring an end to violence on the University of Tulsa’s campus. TITAN is conducting an ongoing study looking at the prevalence of interpersonal violence on our campus, as well as assessing attitudes and beliefs students report about these areas of violence. In the coming months, the Alliance plans to roll out the second half of the Red Flag Campaign as well as various activities to raise awareness of and prevent interpersonal violence on The University of Tulsa’s campus. The Alliance is hopeful that the accumulation of passive and active programming will help to strengthen the efforts toward the elimination of interpersonal violence on The University of Tulsa’s campus.
Anyone interested in the efforts of the Advocacy Alliance is encouraged to contact admin-titan@utulsa.edu.
Visit the Advocacy Alliance on Facebook